How AptDeco Offers Furniture Pickup & Delivery

31 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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1:25

In this short conversational excerpt, two speakers discuss AptDeco’s logistics approach for furniture pickup and delivery. They explain that the company uses a hybrid model: in some markets they build and operate their own pickup/delivery service, while in others they outsource to third‑party shippers. The discussion highlights AptDeco’s asset‑light philosophy—avoiding large warehouses—and recounts an early Bay Area launch where the company invested in a few trucks and about 1,000 sq ft of transit space. That pilot taught them that fixed‑asset utilization is low until a certain demand scale is reached. Consequently, after expanding nationally they now rely on third‑party logistics providers, only bringing operations in‑house in markets where scale justifies the investment.

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pickup and delivery. And, you know, as far as, you know, is this something that you essentially kind of build out in each market, or is it something that you potentially kind of partner with in, you know, certain markets?
Yes. Yes. And for both. So we, in certain markets, we do it ourselves. So like we build it out from scratch. And so in other markets, we're outsourcing it, but then bring it in-house when it makes sense. So, you know, I think even with, with like logistics and While we're an asset-light business where, because we don't warehouse, like there is still a physical component of what we do. So when we launched in the Bay Area, you know, we invested in a couple of trucks and a small space just to store things that are in transit. And by small, like I literally mean like maybe like 1,000 square feet, like very, very small, like smaller than anybody's apartment. And then we just saw like, we thought demand will come right away, but it took a bit of time. So then like, we're just not utilizing our, our, our fixed assets to the highest extent. And that was a good learning for us around like getting to a certain scale before investing in physical property. And so what we've done since then is we're, you know, we've launched nationally and we're using third-party shippers to do the logistics for us. And when we get to a certain scale, then we're able to like bring our own logistics in certain markets when we feel like it's needed.